


Remarkable Initiative

by Prinzenhasserin



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Gen, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-27 22:58:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15695064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/pseuds/Prinzenhasserin
Summary: Pol wakes up in an unfamiliar room, which is pretty weird since the last thing he remembers was a knife between his ribs and landing on sharp cliffs.





	Remarkable Initiative

**Author's Note:**

  * For [looselipssinksubs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/looselipssinksubs/gifts).



Pol knew that there was something quite fishy about his rescuer. It was very apparent from the beginning, since there was no way at all he could have survived a fall like that, with a knife in his shoulder, and the weight of Ambiades impacting the brunt of his fall. He had been certain he was done for--he was glad to have stepped over the ledge to protect his charge, and his only regret was that he couldn't see him become King. Pol might've been able to turn around their bodies in the air, if he hadn't been hit by the dagger-- but Pol was a soldier. He didn't deal in maybes, or perhapses. 

He'd been dead, he was quite certain of that.

Pol had awoken in a bed made out of the flimsiest, most comfortable feather-down he had ever known. His body felt light, like it had never done before--not in recent memory at least, where he spent his nights on stones and dirt and woke up to aches in his bones. There was a person sitting at his bedside, feet up and leaning back.

"I am dead, aren’t I?" he asked. There was just something about the person lounging at his side that was putting to mind the stories of old. Stories he had quite happily dismissed as nonsense, until Gen had narrated a few with that mesmerising voice of his.

The person-- man, dressed in a comfortable Eddisian style tunic, tights, and the same comfortable style of shoes Gen favoured (he assumed it was a style for mountain climbing, or perhaps thievery)-- moved his shoulders. "Not very," he said, tilting up the end of the sentence in a question.

"That doesn't make sense," Pol said. 

"Not many things do, here." 

Pol looked up at the ceiling. He tried sitting up, but the soft material of the bed seemed to suck him further down. There was something strange about the painting on the ceiling, it almost looked like elliptical movement tables. He tried focusing on one of the stars, but his eyes watered. His brain felt dizzy, as if he was the one moving. Pol had to look away again, certain that he had caught only a sliver of the detailed art on the ceiling.

"I don't understand," Pol said. He closed his eyes. There was a quiet ticking noise next to him--a clock, perhaps? He opened his eyes again, hoping the brief respite had made him less nauseous, and then he saw the giant lever. There was a no less huge cogwheel attached to it, moving the stars across the ceiling with the stroke of seconds.

"Who are you," Pol asked, and then right after, answered his own question, "—Eugenides."

The man at his bedside grinned. "At your service," he said, and made a mocking bow from his seat on the bedside. There was an uncanny likeness to the other thief he had so recently met, even though the two of them looked barely the same. A similar charisma, a similar outlook to life.

"At my service?" Pol asked, incredulously. He could still barely move, though he tried again, and he could lift his head at least.  _But I died,_  he didn't say.  _But I'm mortal_ , he also didn't. There was a pause, in which the two of them, god to mortal, stared at each other. Finally, Pol said, bluntly, "Why?"

"I bargained for your life, of course."

Nothing about that sentence made sense, but neither had the past week, really. Pol blinked. "What for?" he asked.

"I need someone to protect-- let's call it a vested interest of mine," Eugenides said.

 

"Pol," a surprised voice said. "That sure is some good lethium, my hallucinations never used to be this realistic. Have you come to haunt me from the grave with my past mistakes?" The other Eugenides looked almost rougher than he had fresh out of Sounis' prison. He was much older than Pol remembered him, and there was an air of command about him that hadn't been present during their quest to steal Hamiathes' gift. His hair was short, now. Nowhere to hide small trinkets, except that was probably the biggest false assumption.

"Eugenides sent me," Pol said.

Gen flopped dramatically back into the comfortable chair he'd been laying across. It looked very uncomfortable, but Pol guessed that was part of the drama. Gen covered his eyes, and groaned. There was a pause, in which Pol waited if Gen would indicate that he was ready to receive the message from the Gods. It looked more and more like the God of Thieves knew Gen better than him, though, because the God had told him that his namesake would sulk and try his best to mishear the message.

Clearly, the Gods just needed to treat him like the sulky teenager he was at heart, because just before Pol moved the air for his next breath, Gen waved his hand. "Let's hear it, then. What do the Gods want to tell me now? Do I need to brush up my Mede? Learn how to knit? I've stopped sulking."

"Doesn't much look like you have," Pol said. 

Gen-- the King of Attolia, Pol shouldn't think of him with a childhood nickname, even though they were introduced that way-- sighed deeply. "Is that the godsforsaken message? It figures."

"No," Pol said. "That was my addition. The message is actually, 'He's a gift for your use, oh venerated King.' "

The King of Attolia sat up, very suddenly. He looked exhausted still, worked to the bone, yet suddenly his eyes were bright and sparkly. The hook on his hand was buried in his left upper thigh. "Are you really?" he asked.

Pol looked around. There was nothing that had appeared with him, and he reconsidered the brief history of the peninsula in his absence that the God Eugenides had given him. "Me?" Pol asked.

"The Gods are terrible and frightful," Eugenides grinned. "But sometimes they show remarkable initiative. Do you come with strings attached, Pol?"

"My oath is to the King of Sounis," Pol said.

"Excellent," Eugenides grinned. "Let's go see him right now."


End file.
